Microsoft details Word 2013 battery life optimizations for Windows RT

For those that don’t know, Windows RT comes with Office Home and Student 2013 RT. Since battery life and and memory are a key aspect of ensuring responsiveness when it comes to tablet devices, Microsoft goes over how Word 2013 is optimized just for Windows RT.

“With the introduction of Windows RT, Office recognized that more PCs will be mobile than ever before. For that reason, the Office team deeply invested in minimizing the impact our apps have on a mobile PC’s battery life wherever possible,” Microsoft stated in an official blog post. Word 2013 will enter a “deep idle” state when the user stops interacting with the application for 30 seconds. This pretty much means that Word 2013 is “throttled-down” by stopping the cursor from blinking and using 0% CPU, while still remaining responsive. “You might see Word go into deep idle when you’re reading a document and haven’t needed to navigate for a while, when a friend or family member distracts you for a few minutes, when you’re doing some research in IE while Word sits in the background, or when you set your device down while you run outside to check the mail. In all such cases, Word will throttle down after 30 seconds to help protect your device’s battery life. And, when you interact with Word again, it’ll throttle up instantly to give you the great responsiveness that you crave,” Microsoft explains.

Microsoft has also introduced a “Low Resource Mode” in all of its Office 2013 applications, including Word 2013, which pretty much means Word 2013 will release up to 35% of its memory usage after 30 seconds of being minimized. “Scrolling via touch in Word 2013 on a Windows RT slate looks and feels fluid and natural. Typing feels clean and responsive, and a smooth yet subtle cursor animation enhances every keystroke. The overall experience feels solid,” Microsoft adds. Anyone excited over Word 2013?